Dear Viking Answer Lady:

In Erik the Red's Saga, when describing the event when Erik's son is killed, the author notes a Native Americian as a shiny "one legged" man. I've never seen this answered as to why the man is called this, but I think I have a solution. Native Americians in that area wore Breech Clouts and leggings as did many tribes. If he was spotted in a somewhat grassy area, it would indeed seem like the man had one leg. Breech Clouts being a single long piece of fabric or leather that is fasened through the legs and up, and then tied with a strip of leather, that came down to the knees or slightly above. To explain the "shiny" comment, Native Americans often smeared "Bear Oil" and various herbs on themselves, giving them protection from the cold, the sun and providing protection from insects, this "grease" was said to sparkle in the moon or sun light.

[It happened one morning that Karlsefni and his men noticed up above the clearing a kind of speck as it were glittering back at them, and they shouted at it. It moved -- it was a uniped -- and hopped down to the river-bank off which they were lying. Thorvald Eirik the Red's son was sitting by the rudder, and the uniped shot an arrow into his guts. He drew out the arrow. "There is fat round my belly!" he said. "We have won a fine and fruitful country, but will hardly be allowed to enjoy it." Thorvald died of this wound a little later. The uniped skipped away and back north, and Karlsefni and his men gave chase, catching sight of him every now and again. The last glimpse they had of him, he was leaping for some creek or other. Karlsefni and his men then turned back. Then one of the men sang this ditty:

Men went chasing,
I tell you no lie,
A one-legger racing
The seashore by:
But this man-wonder,
Curst son of a trollop,
Karlsefni, pray ponder,
Escaped at a gallop.

They concluded that those mountains which were at Hóp and those they had now discovered were one and the same range, that they therefore stood directly in line with each other, and extended the same distance on both sides of Straumfjord.]

The words used for this one-legged creature or uniped are:

einfætingur

einfætingurinn

einfætingi

einfæting

Einfætingaland

All of these are from the root which means literally, "one-foot" or "one-footed".

The term einfættr also appears in Grettis saga, chapter 4 in reference to Önundr tréfótur Ófeigsson (Önundr Tree-foot, for his wooden leg):

"Bloody thy wounds. Didst thou see me flee?One-leg no hurt received from thee.
Braver are many in word than in deed.
Thou, slave, didst fail when it came to the trial."]

In all occurrences of the term einfættr and variants, it is used to mean "having one leg", "one-legged". As in Grettis saga, the term is used literally everywhere it is encountered.

I think it extremely unlikely that Karlsefni and his men would have been deceived by a loin-cloth wearing Native American. The natives that the Norse encountered in Vinland and called skraelings are thought to have been the ancestors of the Beothuk Indians and the Mikmak Indians, related to the Algonquin tribes, whose material culture was based on small bands that pursued a seasonal round of hunter-gathering activities, including salon fishing, caribou and seal hunting, fishing, and coastal birding. These sub-Arctic tribes would have dressed and lived very much like the Eskimo peoples, thus loin-cloths alone would not have been a typical part of their attire.

Note that Eiríks saga rauða was written in the early 13th century. Like the other sagas, the author was a learned man, a part of the medieval scholastic tradition, and like Snorri Sturluson was certainly aware of the literature, including the genre of "medieval traveler's wonder tales".

The "one-legged" creature is a standard of the medieval traveler's "wonder tales". At the edges of the world people always envisioned strange and often dangerous creatures. For ancient peoples the earth's farthest perimeter was a realm radically different from what they perceived as central and human. The alien qualities of these "edges of the earth" became the basis of a literary tradition that endured throughout antiquity and into the Renaissance, despite the growing challenges of emerging scientific perspectives. This phenomenon is so widespread that a number of books have been written on the subject. In fact, the same phenomenon continues today, providing us the many and varied aliens of science fiction and speculative literature.

Another one-legged creature appears on the 13th century Mappa Mundi, drawn ca. 1290, probably by Richard de Bello, Prebendary of Lafford in the diocese of Lincoln. The interstices of the Mappa Mundi feature a multitude of mythological races, beasts and amazing phenomena, which jostle for space, including the drawing of the Sciapod, an extraordinary being who sheltered himself from the heat of the sun with his single enormous foot. This Sciapod is directly contemporary with the einfætingur of Eiríks saga rauða.